Not Always True
by Number Ten
Summary: One shot of how Crystal would confront her half-brother, Gideon over his "destiny." Takes place just before "A Wonderous Place."


_This is a one shot that would be how I think my own character Crystal would try and confront her brother about his fate. This would happen just before "A Wonderous Place." If you want to know more about Crystal, read my story Once Upon Another Time. All rights go to ABC and the creators of Once Upon A Time._

Crystal walks along in the forest, following her intuition. If Gideon was anything like her or her father, he'd be hiding in the forest. She isn't sure why she's doing this. Mason would kill her if he found out, which is why she waited until he fell asleep on the couch to sneak out and find her brother. She knows that she and Gideon are more alike than anything. They both have struggled with their powers and where they belong, it's just that Crystal has grown up knowing love, while Gideon has only known hate.

She reaches a moonlit clearing and sure enough, she sees the cloaked figure of her half-brother standing at the edge of it. His cloak seems to shine in the moonlight. He hardly looks menacing and Crystal steps from the shadows.

"Come to waste my time then?" the cloaked figure asks.

"I know you sent Killian away on purpose…" Crystal says through gritted teeth. "I saw you leaving the docks after the Nautilus submerged."

"Following me, are you? What makes you so sure that I did anything at all. Perhaps I like watching the sea at night."

"Stop lying!" she barks at him. "I know what you're up to Gideon. You want to break Emma down and make her suffer. It's what all villains do. Dad did it when he let Killian die to give him back all the darkness and you're doing it again. Am I the only one in this family who tried to change?!" She left Belle out since she was always a good person and didn't have the Dark Powers the other three had.

Gideon turns to face her. He lowers his hood slightly to gaze upon his angry older sister, despite the fact that he was now 8 years older than her.

"Apparently you are. You are also very clever to figure out my plan, so what are you going to do? Plead for me to bring him back? Beg for me not to kill the Saviour."

"Her name is Emma!" Crystal barks angrily.

"What do I care about formalities. Does a farmer name the pig he's about to slaughter?"

Crystal grinds her teeth together and tries to keep her magic in check.

"You're as bad as Dad is,"

"You flatter me," Gideon says, pulling his hood down fully. Crystal could see the resemblance to their shared father in the eyes and hair, but with Belle's petite face. She did wonder who her brother would look like when he grew up and now... she didn't want the answer anymore. "But I can save you the speech and say that nothing will prevent me from fulfilling my destiny." He turns away from her and attempts to leave.

"That's good because I'm not great at improvised speeches," she says, throwing her hands into her pockets.

Gideon turns around. "Is that supposed to be funny?"

Crystal shrugs.

"What are you doing here? Trying to give me another hero's speech."

"That was my intention but clearly you're not in the mood for it."

"What gave it away, you... a poor excuse for a sorceress?"

"Is that really how you should talk to your big sister?" she says, grinning at his pathetic insult.

"You're not my sister. I have no sister, I have no mother, I have no father. I am alone. You are merely the pathetic offspring of a miller's maid and a poor excuse for a spinner."

"Wow, right to the bone huh?" she smirks. "You really think insulting me will take the pain away? Meanwhile, you are the offspring of a bookworm who likely had Stockholm Syndrome and the troll who held her captive for many years and has left more corpses than a graveyard can produce. How much more pathetic can you get?"

Gideon turns to glare at her. He throws his hand out in anger, in an attempt to choke her but Crystal holds her hand up to block his attack. Gideon's eyes go wide for a moment.

"Ooh, Grandma must've not told you about me huh? She must have thought that I was born while Dad was still human. Well, guess what?"

Crystal allows her hands to glow purple. "Daddy passed on a little magic to me too."

Gideon growls and forces a blast at his half-sister, which she deflects with an energy shield of her own creation.

"You are so much like dad. If you really want to hurt me, try something at least remotely new."

Gideon tries harder, but his hand begins to burn with the intensity of how hard he is forcing the magic. Crystal gives him a sort of smirk. She snaps her fingers and vanishes. Gideon growls under his breath

She reappears on a tree branch.

"Talk about Déjà vu, you know, dad and I did this exact thing while you were still in the womb."

Gideon lets out another energy blast, completely destroying the tree branch… but not his sister.

She appears on a log behind him.

"You done yet?"

He turns and hurtles another blast and once again she vanishes.

"You know trying to destroy your problems won't make them go away, right?"

"STOP TALKING!" he yells, throwing another blast at her, except she holds up her hand and stops it in mid-air. She then uses her own powers to crush the orange blast into to harmless dust.

"You are so much like dad it's not even funny."

"I said SHUT UP!" Gideon barks. He raises his hand to attack and Crystal raises her. They are both frozen in that position, equally powerful and equally dangerous.

"Look at us, we've only just met and we're already fighting like siblings."

"I'll teach you to mouth off to me!" Gideon snarls. He tries to force out another blast of magic, but he is being blocked by something.

"How much longer are we going to have to do this?" she says in a fake whine. "Mason is at home waiting for me."

"You won't make it home if I have anything to say about it!"

"All bark and no bite," she taunts. "Can't you at least give me a challenge?"

Gideon launches yet another blast of dark magic, which Crystal forces out into a nearby tree, burning a hole right through it.

She knows she's going to have to try a different approach. She lowers her arms and stands, not using her magic to defend herself.

"Go ahead," she says. "Do it, but I do have a werewolf boyfriend at home who is more than willing to make you his next meal."

"No one will weep for you when you're gone!" Gideon says with glee. He feels a powerful blast coming up, the energy burning through his veins. Crystal stands there, unafraid and waiting.

The cloaked soul creates a ball of dark orange magic in his hands, feeling the happiness and joy of being able to destroy this nuisance. He puts all his hatred into this blast, all the pain, all the anger that has built up inside of him. He throws it and there's a blinding flash of light.

Once the light has died down, Gideon turns towards what should be a pile of ashes, but instead, Crystal stands there, completely unharmed, her necklace made of blue crystal formed into the shape of a heart glows slightly in the moonlight.

"Are you done yet?" she asks.

"How…" he hisses. "How…?!"

"It's called love, Gideon… I'm not sure if you know it."

Gideon charges toward his sister, fed up with her attitude, but Crystal uses her own magic to teleport closer to him and grabs his arm before he can strike her.

"Stop it!" she says, looking into his brown eyes. Belle's eyes if she can remember correctly, but their dad's hair.

A strange sensation suddenly enters both of their bodies as Crystal's magic meets Gideon's. Her hand glows a light purple that immediately begins to burn his skin. Her brother tries to get out of her grasp, but she holds it. The light begins to get brighter and brighter until Gideon is practically screaming in pain, but Crystal holds on, not wanting to let go until it is complete.

At last, she loosens her grasp and Gideon tears his arm away, wanting to know how much damage she did to him. Would this prevent him from battling the Saviour again? Instead of a hideous burning scar, he sees a small heart set in purple, etched like a tattoo on the inside of his wrist. It's just faint outline of a heart and it stings every so often. He tries to conjure up more magic but nothing happens.

"What did you do to me?!" he demands.

"I neutralized your magic so I could do this…" She reaches forward and traps her brother in a hug. He struggles, but Crystal keeps him in the embrace until she's good and ready. Once she lets go she steps back.

Gideon tries to attack, taking a swing at his sister, but Crystal easily dodges. She raises her hands and causes the dark figure's feet to sink into the mud, trapping him temporarily.

"Relax Darth Vader, it's only temporary."

"How dare you?" he snarls, trying to break free, but with no magic, he is as good as stuck.

"How dare I what, hug my brother, try to protect him, wanting to talk to him like a normal person?"

"I am NOT your brother!" he snarls.

"Keep denying it all you want, but the more you hate, the more you feed Grandma's power."

"My power is my own I won't…"

"My gawd, will you please shut up for a moment?"

"Never!" he hisses angrily.

"Alright, don't shut up, but at least listen."

"Don't try to talk me out of my destiny! I have seen the vision and I know I have to kill the Saviour and there's nothing any of you can say to stop me."

"Hey, I won't do that, you don't screw around with fate and all that. Oracle magic is not worth my time."

"Then why are you here?" Gideon grumbles, still trying to free himself.

"I wanted to talk to my brother," Crystal says, sitting on a nearby rock facing him. "Tell him how worried I am about him."

"Why should you be worried? Why even bother talking to me? You all see me as the villain that needs to be eliminated. You don't even know me."

"That is true, you disappeared before I even got to hold you as a baby, make that connection. But despite what you've become, I still love you."

Gideon's arm explodes in pain and he watches as the outline of the heart on his forearm gets a little bit thicker.

"And I wanted to tell you that you and I are not that different."

"Oh yes we are, I am a great sorcerer destined to kill the Saviour and lift this terrible curse she has put us under. And in return for my great feat, I will become the Saviour. While you are a weak bug meant to be squashed by a great darkness."

"You really think killing Emma is going to make you the Saviour?"

"Of course, it has already been written out for me and nothing you can do can stop me. You wouldn't understand fate."

"You're right, I don't and that is because I make my own." Crystal shrugs. "I don't need a powerful Oracle to tell me my destiny, I make my own path."

"That is where you and I differ greatly," he says.

"Maybe in that way, yes, but both of us have much more in common."

"No we do not!" he barks.

"We both have magic," Crystal says, deciding to start small. "Dark magic that neither of us can really control. We both grew up without a father. We only knew that he was a coward and left us and our mothers behind… actually, that doesn't really count, you were abducted and never got to know your mother."

"I was raised by an evil witch who trained me to be powerful and realize my full potential, while you hid your abilities in this mediocre world and never tried to conquer what was meant to be yours."

"We're both afraid of our powers," she goes on as if her brother had not spoken. "And what it might do to the people we love."

"I embrace my powers with full passion and I don't care who gets in my way!" he proclaims.

"I doubt that," Crystal mutters. "I doubt that very much. If you are anything like me, you didn't embrace your powers at first and you were very much afraid of the world around you."

Gideon opens his mouth to speak but Crystal cuts him off.

"You seriously never felt that gut-wrenching uneasiness in the pit of your stomach, the one that made your knees buckle and your head to spin. Make tears rise from your eyes and make you wish you were anywhere else? That feeling that made you feel that the world was against you and all you wanted to do was crawl into your mother's arms and cry?"

Crystal locks eyes with her brother and she sees that she's struck a nerve with him, one that he's likely hidden under all the darkness and hatred.

"The feeling that you never had anyone in the world but yourself and you just wanted to curl up into a ball and weep until your eyes were dry?"

Gideon does his best to not wager from his anger, but what his captor had just said made his mind flood with the memories of his life in that terrible realm, where he was locked up and humiliated at every turn. Where the woman who was supposed to care for him beat him and broke him down. He does remember times when he curled up in his cell and longed for a foggy memory of a mother who held him, gave him his name and said she loved him.

"We both hated who we became and who had given us life as well as these powers. We both live with a past that we'd rather just forget, but we're still haunted by those memories every day We've both likely taken a life and battled with an evil voice in our heads, yours is more literal than mine and wish that we would just die…"

Gideon's face as becomes less angry and slightly softer. Not a lot, but just enough to show her brother the truth. Now that she had gotten through to him, Crystal brought out the last big gun.

"But through all that hell, we both were saved by our mother's love…"

Crystal swears she can see a tear in her half-brother's eye.

"It protected us and prevented us from being truly evil. Saved us from the darkness. The woman who loved you no matter what happened, who did everything she could to protect you and keep you safe. The woman who went through hell just to bring you into the world, alone. A woman who had her heart broken many times before the man she loved ever gave her second glance… the woman who could say those three words… I love you."

Gideon winces as the heart on his wrist becomes thicker yet again. It didn't hurt as much as before, but it was not a pleasant feeling. What sort of evil sorcery was this? How could a worthless hero have such powerful magic?

"I know I won't be able to talk you out of your mission," Crystal sighs, getting a far off look in her eye. "But I just wanted to get to know my brother a little better. I never got to see you smile for the first time, see you take your first step, say your first word…"

Again, the heart gets thicker.

"What are you doing to me?" he demands angrily.

"It's the mark of love and the only reason it hurts is because you are so full of hate. It's a foreign feeling and it stings because you've never had someone say those words to you except after you were born of course."

"I will get out of this and when I do…"

"Is threatening the only thing you can do? Not so tough without your magic, now are you?" she says, standing up. "Because underneath all of that, you're still the brother I love and the son Dad and Belle love. You're a scared little boy who's never known the feeling of love."

"I don't need love!"

"I used to think that too. My mind used to be filled with so much hate that I wanted to destroy everything in my path. When I saw Dad for the first time, I threw a car at him, expressing my pent-up rage towards him. I wanted to make him suffer the way that I suffered and I knew that I was more powerful than he was. I thought it might've been the darkness in my past and the pain that I felt, but it was something else. Do you know what that is?"

"Love?" he scoffs.

"It was my mother's love that made me more powerful than him. It was the one thing that Dad's powers could never conjure up or destroy completely. It was the one thing that kept me and you from the dark side. It's what protected me. It was at the moment when I confronted him the second time and nearly destroyed him. When he admitted that he loved my mother that I felt all that anger and pain go away. All those years of hatred simply melted into nothing, knowing that he really did love my mom. I knew that all those things that I felt towards him was poison and it was spreading through my veins and corrupting my life. I realized that it wasn't Dad who was destroying my life, it was me… I knew he was telling the truth and he deeply regretted his actions, but I didn't have to suffer from his mistakes… I was not going to become a monster like him."

Crystal conjures up a small ball of light purple energy and twirls it in her fingers.

"Dad's had centuries to learn to deal with the guilt and accept the darkness. It's what he's doing for you right now. He's trying to protect you because he loves you and doesn't want you to make his mistakes."

Gideon rolls his eyes and looks away from his sister.

"He doesn't want any of his children to be taken by the darkness like he was. Baelfire ran away from it, I fashioned my own path and you were kidnapped, but protected from it. That's what he's trying to do with your so-called destiny. You really think you'll become the Saviour if you kill Emma?"

"Of course I will."

"And once Emma's dead…" Crystal winces at the thought. "You think you can just take over her position? That you'll be heralded as a hero?"

"But of course," Gideon says.

"You're a bigger fool than I thought. If you kill Emma…"

"WHEN!" Gideon cuts her off.

"When you kill her, you'll have to deal with her loving parents, who are trained as warriors. A formerly Evil Queen with powers of her own, a heart-broken and vengeful pirate… trust me, he spent 200 years trying to avenge Dad's first wife. Her son, who is an author and thousands of other angry Storybrooke residents, including pirates, Vikings, werewolves and so on."

"I can take them down easily," Gideon scoffs. "I will have gained newfound power and so much more to crush those puny, insolent beings!"

"That maybe so, but do you really think Belle is going to love you after that?"

Gideon's smile fades instantly and he feels something in his chest. A pain he's never felt before.

"I mean I'm sure she'll try to love you at first, and so will Dad, but by then, they'll be more afraid of you and have to defeat you."

"What makes you so sure?"

"It's what will happen and I know this because that is how I'm going to have to react too. You'll be much worse than Dad and Grandma and Grandpa combined. I won't be able to force myself to love you anymore."

"Your love means nothing to me!"

"Maybe not, but I know Mom's love does and once that's gone, there won't be anything left protecting you from becoming the darkest thing to ever live…"

Gideon opens his mouth to speak, but no words come out. He had never thought of what would come after he impaled the Saviour on a sword. He could easily defeat her loved ones and maybe the whole town… but he never thought of what his mother would think. The one woman who had saved him for all those years. Her tear stricken face, becoming a monster.

"You and I have been dealt tough hands Gideon. It's okay to say that our lives suck. I mean look at the family tree. Our grandmother is the source of all darkness, our grandfather became a famous demon who kidnapped and murdered innocent children. Our father was a coward who was humiliated until he murdered and became a demonic Dark One. He killed more times than anyone can count and seduced both our mothers. He actually held yours captive for awhile. He betrayed my mother and planned to eat my heart to regain his power. My mother spent time in Wonderland where time stopped and she was left carrying the offspring of a man she thought she loved. I was born and became demonic like my father, while my mother suffered. I… killed my mother in my darkest moment and even lived on the street for awhile. You were abducted within a day of taking your first breath and raised in your own self-made hell. With a being that abused, tortured and hurt you in every single way. Made you corrupt. We may have very different backgrounds, but we're more alike than you care to admit. The one difference that I am proud to not share with you is that I didn't embrace the darkness. I made something worth keeping in my life while you will be left with nothing in the end. And I will definitely not weep when I have to kill you to protect what I love."

Gideon's eyes narrow in anger and he clenches his hands into fists. The heart marking again stings and he can feel tears welling up in his eyes. He forces the feelings back down again.

"I look forward to when I can defeat you," he hisses with glee. "I can wipe out all the Saviour's followers."

"Grandma is using you like a puppet, once you've destroyed her enemies, she'll likely kill you too to take your power."

"That will never happen," the younger brother says confidently.

"The woman is the source of all darkness, you don't think she wouldn't destroy a threat and the light magic within you?"

Gideon faces his sister. "You're telling me nothing but lies now, like you have before. Once this curse wears off, I will make you pay to feel the pain for every lie you've told."

"You can threaten me all you want Gideon, but you can't hurt me and you won't"

"What makes you so sure?"

She doesn't say anything at first, Crystal just stands up. "I love you, little brother, this may be the last time you ever hear those words. And what makes me so sure is that the curse wore off awhile ago…"

Crystal vanishes in a cloud of light purple smoke, leaving her brother stunned.

He teleports out of the ground and stands at his original spot, anger welling up inside him. He checks and sees that the heart has now vanished. He is back to full power. He puts his hood up again and begins to ponder his plan again. He had sent the Saviour's precious boyfriend into another world to get break her spirit so she would be easier to defeat… but those last few words that Crystal had said about the Black Fairy still linger. Would she try and destroy him once he had defeated the others? Was he merely a pawn in this woman's twisted game?

 _No more,_ he thought. He knew that as long as the being lived, she would always have control over him. Her soul was the blackest of all and she would not hesitate to get rid of him like he would the Saviour. His plan would have to take a slight detour…

…

Crystal sits at home, looking outside at the moon and stars. She fiddles with the necklace, thinking about her brother, out there, consumed by hatred. That could have very well been her if her mother had not run from my father and saved them. She could be the one forced to kill Emma and becoming the most hated individual in Storybrooke. She could be left with no love and no future… but she didn't. She took control of her own fate and made something worth keeping.

She looks over at Mason, sleeping on the couch, in the small apartment she now called home. She was grateful that it wasn't her…but she wished her brother would just change his own fate. Love is what saved her, she just hoped it could save her baby brother too.

…

Gideon morphs into Aesop, a bartender at the newest pub in town. He knew that now that the Saviour felt abandoned, she'd go anywhere to get rid of the pain, including drowning it in alcohol. He prepares himself, ready to take the next step in his plan…

Not knowing that a tiny heart had reappeared on his arm.


End file.
